Yesterday, a discussion about race results in thread titles became quite heated, so I decided to lock the thread.
Personally, spoilers don’t bother me. If I can’t watch a race live, I stay off my phone entirely until I’ve caught up. Since results are everywhere: TV, radio, and all over social media, avoiding them is usually up to the individual.
The current spoiler rule was originally implemented by three moderators (myself included) as the community grew. However, I am now the only active mod left, and I don’t want to be the sole person deciding whether to change this policy. Even if we change the rule, there’s always a chance someone will post a result in their excitement, and I won’t always be available to remove it immediately.
I’ve created a poll to let the community decide. It will remain open until this Thursday:
https://strawpoll.com/bVg8BLRQ3yY
PS: I understand that disagreements can get intense, but please keep the conversation respectful. There’s enough negativity in the world already, let’s keep this community a positive place.
Edit: the results are in!
Rule number 3 will not be adjusted. Thanks for voting everyone!
If you ban race results in the title, where do you stop? What if I wanted to post a highlight from the race, is it too spoiler-y to state X driver did Y in the title?
Lemmy/Piefed has a spoiler tag for exactly a scenario like this. Title it “Race results”/“The winner is…”, use the spoiler tag to blur the post image. Everyone can click on it and no one gets spoilered against their will.
This is not implemented in lemmy.world yet right?
I believe it should be. When creating a new post there should be a box to tick for “nsfw”.
I believe that this setting however makes the post not show up at all for people who have decided to block all nsfw content from their feeds. But usually for most people it should result in a blur that can be clicked.
My stance is along the lines of this: who are these posts for? We should always do things for a reason.
On the one side of the field we have a large number of people who want to watch races but can’t always watch them live. This is a confirmed and not insignificant group of people. Many of these people are active contributors and members of this (our) very community.
On the other side we have a nebulous and hypothetical group of strangers. This group does not want to watch races, but does sort of want to know who wins the races. But they also don’t want to put in any effort whatsoever to find out themselves. They don’t read the sports news. In fact, all they want is to be able to skim titles as they’re scrolling social media and find out without even having to open the post in question. That way they can be informed about who won the F1 race so they can participate in F1-related small talk in the office while simultaneously putting in the absolute minimum effort required to engage with the sport.
It’s all a matter of which of these groups we want to cater to.
I disagree with this reasoning. I don’t think we should be creating rules on the premise of “who are these posts for?”. First of all, we don’t know if there are people who want these posts or not. Most of the time you don’t know until it’s posted and even it’s not entirely clear. For example should we also ban posts about liveries or helmets? Very often they’re the lowest upvoted posts and very rarely does it spark a discussion. Using your argument there’s no reason for those posts to exists because it’s only catering to somekind of hypothetical group of strangers whose existence we can’t even verify. I don’t think livery or helmet posts should be banned. I might not upvote them nor comment on them but I do enjoy looking at the on occasions. In case of liveries and helmets I’m that hypothetical group of strangers. It’s not a question of “who is it for?” it’s a question of “do we as a community want these posts?” and when it comes to spoiling race winners I think the community overall will agree that we don’t want those posts.
That said, I voted Yes for an entirely different reason. I don’t like the wording of the question. I think it’s too ambiguous. What constitutes as a race result? If I post about Hadjar driving it into the wall, should that be banned? After all it very much spoils how Hadjars race went. We all have our favorite drivers and some of us definitely care more about how they did rather than who won. My wife doesn’t care about Antonelli winning, she only cares about where Verstappen ended up. So if the rule is about spoiling race results any post about a crash that DNFs the car should get banned. But I don’t think crash posts should also get banned because those can spark entire discussions. Bearmans crash is Suzuka was such a significant crash it changed the rules, but because it would break the rule we shouldn’t dedicate a discussion to it? I think the rule should be unambiguous and as such the question about implementing the rule should also be unambiguous. I don’t think all race results posts should be banned, I think race winner posts should be banned.
I don’t understand your counter arguments, really. I never once brought up upvote counts or engagement. I don’t see the logic you’re purporting to draw from the helmets either. This is a community for F1. Helmets and liveries are a large part of that. Someone interested in F1 has a good chance to be at least curious about helm or livery design. I don’t understand how you got from there to thinking I would purport we ban helmet posts?
All I’m saying is: we know there is a significant part of our community that can’t watch races live, and would like to remain unspoiled so they can watch later. We can choose to do what we can to help these fans out and protect them, by electing to not include spoilers in post titles to the extent we are able without completely compromising the function of the sub at a whole. I’m not suggesting a news blackout, I’m not suggesting banning race clips or accidents or stuff like Hadjars crash. Yes, they are also spoilers but we can’t bend over backwards. This is only about whether or not we should include spoiler information about race winners in the title of a post.
We can also elect to just say “fuck em” to the people who can’t watch live. But I don’t think we should, and I don’t understand why we would go that route. What do we lose by having titles be spoiler free (eg: “Winner of the Miami Grand Prix!” with a blurred image)? To me it seems like we lose nothing, we don’t impose any particularly strenuous burdens on ourselves, but at the same time we might make a huge difference for some of our community members.
And that leads me back to the beginning of “who is this for?”. Who are we hurting by doing spoiler free titles? Who stands to benefit from the current status quo that would suffer by introducing spoiler free titles?
You said we should do things for a reason but you haven’t given a reason why we should do thing one way or another. You’ve only given your opinion disguised as a reason, which is also why it makes no sense to you when I replace your opinion with a different opinion and keep the disguise intact, it stops being your opinion so it stops making sense. Maybe this will make it clearer?
On the other side we have a nebulous and hypothetical group of strangers. This group does not want to watch races, but does sort of want to know what liveries or helmets were made for the race. But they also don’t want to put in any effort whatsoever to find out themselves. They don’t read the sports news. In fact, all they want is to be able to skim titles as they’re scrolling social media and find out without even having to open the post in question. That way they can see the liveries and helmets so they can participate in F1-related small talk in the office while simultaneously putting in the absolute minimum effort required to engage with the sport.
I can also flip it around and defend race win posts.
This is a community for F1. Race wins are a large part of that. Someone interested in F1 has a good chance to be at least curious about who won. I don’t understand how you got from there to thinking I would purport we ban race winner posts?
Any argument you give on why we should ban race win posts can most likely be used to argue for banning anything else and any argument you give why we shouldn’t ban something can most likely be used to argue why we shouldn’t ban race win posts. That’s because you’re presenting your opinion as the argument.
The question being too ambiguous is kind of with a reason. If the rule is implemented that you cannot spoil the race winner someone will work a way around it and post all results except the winner. That’s why the rule we have at the moment (browse at your own risk) is just less complicated.
I agree on the poll being ambiguous and maybe a rule could be enforced on marking with a spoiler tag posts including any info on the current/recent race.
I’m in the minority it seems, I don’t mind spoilers. Personally, if I can’t watch live and intend to watch it later I have no reason to view this community. The only thing I will find here are posts on the events of the race.
Hiding the result won’t prevent me from seeing the post race penalties, leader board updates and discussions on notable crashes/spins/overtakes.
This seems like a no brainer to me. What is the benefit of having a post with results in the title rather than in the post itself?
Main benefits:
- Easier for the moderators
- People who want to know who wins but don’t want to watch the races can learn this information from scrolling past the post in their feed, without having to actually open the post. This saves them a click.
- (Tangential) Potentially higher click-through rate from non-F1 fans on the /All feed. They would be very unlikely to click a generic spoiler free “The winner of the Miami Grand Prix is…” post, but if it includes the name of the winner and it is someone they have heard of like let’s say Lewis Hamilton, it could conceivably drive more new users into the F1 community.
I watched f1 for the past 20 years because precisely no one else watches it. It was niche. I don’t care about these summer kids.
I don’t understand how its easier for moderators. Your second point is a ridiculous indication of how lazy our society is. And the third point seems strange, I don’t think this community is set up in a bid to attract fans. Its a place for discussion.
It’s easier for moderators because if you forbid something you add pressure to enforce that rule. Right now if someone creates a post that spoils the race winner the moderators don’t have to do anything. If you forbid those titles, then the moderators have to police it and delete those posts or change their titles. That is more work.
The other points were definitely reaching, I am just trying to see both sides of the argument. For the record, I am in favour of omitting race winners from the post titles. But since there is a discussion around it I was trying to look for any possible benefits of using the full spoiling name in the title.
If a person is going out of their way to avoid all news about a topic, they should avoid using Lemmy and Reddit, just they as the should avoid their favourite news sites.
While I usually don’t even watch races anymore (F1 hasn’t been in a fun place recently imo), if I did watch I’d usually watch delayed, not live.
And just to add to the discussion: I use Lemmy and read the news as the main places I could get spoiled. I’ve not seen the race result from the latter before. So the only source of race result spoilers would be my home feed on Lemmy.
Another compromising suggestion though: what if winners were allowed in the title 24h after a race (preferably by editing)? Though I doubt that’d be a meaningful difference to either side.
Edit: having looked at the race results thread… That was all needlessly antagonistic. And I don’t think “just go on a social media and news blackout until you can watch the race” is fair. I guess the alternative is anyone who wants no spoilers can just block this community, but is that a good solution for anyone?
If you are trying to avoid finding out results, it’s not up to everyone else to accommodate you. What on earth are you doing on the internet if you are trying to avoid information? The community loses purpose by changing this rule.
I must be completely out of step with the rest of the world. Which is nothing new I guess. Naming the post title “The winner of the Miami GP is…” and blurring the image instead of naming the post title “Kimi Antonelli wins the Miami Grand Prix!” means the community completely loses its purpose?
I didn’t say completely. Based on the poll, this is changing. I’m not going to die on this hill.
I watch plenty of races on catch up, when I do I stay off the internet. This place should be free to talk about the results in any way, without pandering to people who can’t stay offline until they’ve caught up.
I also think it’s an extra moderation issue that doesn’t need to exist.
I also stay off the internet to the extent I am able when I can’t watch a race live. I just think writing the post title in a way that doesn’t reveal the winner (note that this is literally the only change being discussed) is an absolute minor and unnoticeable inconvenience for those who watch the races live, while it might actually save someone who intends to watch it later from being spoiled. It seems like such a minimal extra effort to expend in order to make life a little better for others in the community.
However, it all depends on whether people can just be nice. I agree about that. If it turns out that this rule change would lead to an influx of trolls constantly spamming race spoilers leading to overworking the mods then yes, maybe it’s just unfeasible because people can’t behave.
This last race especially with something that rarely happens - a race run earlier and only notified on the race weekend - with the official F1 ical calendar not even updating in a reasonable time for the rest of the world to catch up - on a race weekend after a month long hiatus - then yeah no spoilers in post titles.
Under normal circumstances then if you really have to? But I am absolutely fine with just the post race discussion threads being the source of the race standings. All the other bullshit threads are clout chasing or parroting F1 engagement posts that are just noise.
I think a good compromise would be what other comment suggested: have something like “The winnner of the Miami GP is …”. People who want to know can just click to see the post; people who don’t can simply skip.
Yes. I don’t expect hundreds of people to cater to me if I didn’t watch the race. If I didn’t, it’s my responsibility not to go on social media like a pillock.
